Ulead DVD Workshop 2

Despite the industry's best efforts to bewilder us with multiple formats and confound us with compatibility issues, DVD is still the ultimate final destination for most digital video projects. With so many DVD burners and authoring programs, video editors need never transfer their finished work to VHS again.

Ulead's flagship DVD authoring program is something of a wolf in sheep's clothing. Its simple interface and remarkably straightforward operation are reminiscent of the software company's low-budget video-editing products, such as Videostudio. DVD Workshop 2 is no lightweight program for casual users though.

Support for Dolby Digital AC-3 soundtracks and anamorphic widescreen import/output are fast becoming par for the course. Ulead's product includes both, but goes much further with a respectable selection of high-end features, including output to DVD-9 format (dual-layered) discs and DLT tape.

The latter will be of interest to professionals looking to generate masters from which commercial DVDs can be produced. The former isn't of much use to anybody, yet. Outside of industrial manufacture, there are few DVD burners that support the dual-layer format and blank media of this sort is virtually non-existent.

We can expect to see these technologies fairly soon, however, and the arrival of yet another DVD format to contend with will be softened for DVD Workshop 2 owners who will doubtless be grateful for the built-in future-proofing.

The real ace up the program's sleeves though, is its simplicity and emphasis on the more creative aspects of DVD production. DVD Workshop does a great job of taking some fairly complex concepts and making them easy to understand or even fun to use. Import video clips into the library window and then drag and drop the ones required into the project itself. Menu screens, buttons and other interactive elements can be built from scratch or designed with the help of either templates or a wizard and that's it.

In fact, it's entirely possible to put together a no-frills disc, including menus, within a matter of minutes. That's not counting the time it takes to encode, multiplex and burn the actual project to disc, of course. That part can take considerably longer, depending on the processing power of the system used, the length of the footage and the encoding settings.

Although the program includes some rudimentary tools for capturing, chopping and splicing, editing is not DVD Workshop's strong point. Video clips can be trimmed a little and chapter points, alternative audio tracks or subtitles can be inserted, but that's pretty much the extent of things.

Most users will be much better off using a dedicated capture/editing program first, such as Adobe Premiere or Ulead's own Media Studio Pro.

We were quite surprised by the dearth of tools available for fine-tuning mpeg settings and the like. Ulead provides a handful of output quality templates along with a limited capacity to edit them or create your own.

With the previous incarnation of DVD Workshop it was possible to unlock access to much more detailed mpeg/audio compression and encoding settings by entering a short line of code into the program's.ini file. Thankfully, the same trick works with version 2, but it's bewildering why an application that's apparently aimed at professionals makes these features so awkward to get to.

The most confounding thing about DVD Workshop is its price. At nearly £300 it's hardly likely to be an impulse purchase for most home users. And yet its basic approach and simple way of working make it ideal for beginners.

Entry-level DVD makers are instead encouraged towards Ulead's less capable, but equally straightforward, DVD Moviefactory (£50). The experts and professionals that the program so eagerly courts, meanwhile, will undoubtedly be more attracted to the tighter control offered by high-end DVD authoring programs, such as Apple's DVD Studio Pro for Macs or Adobe's Encore DVD - both of which are only £100 or so more expensive.

DVD Workshop 2 seems oddly positioned in the market. If Ulead was to halve the price and deal with a few niggling stability issues then we'd have no problem recommending this as the top consumer product in its field.

Contact: Ulead 01327 844 880
www.ulead.co.uk

System requirements:

• Windows 2000, XP
• Pentium III 800MHz
• 128MB of Ram
• 500MB hard disk space
• DVD-Rom drive
• Recordable DVD drive for output